Back to Dunedin now for a band doing NZ jangle pop better than the Aussies do NZ jangle pop. Finally! Well, what they do may not strictly fit that description, as Marlin’s Dreaming certainly put their own contemporary stylistic spin on it, but “Lumia” here is a stunner. It’s from “Hasten”, the bands’ third album since starting out in 2017.

I’m absolutely certain Marlin’s Dreaming will have not been thinking about the first Jean Paul Sartre Experience EP (I think about it quite often, maybe even more often that I think about the Roman Empire). They very likely do not even even know (or care) of its existence, and neither should they. But the absolutely gorgeous “Lumia” here has a similar delicate charm of side one of that classic EP which Garage ‘zine editor Richard Langston described perfectly as: “A magic record. Delicate as spider webbing and resilient as steel.”

The music on the album falls loosely into a kind of guitar-arpeggio-dream-pop, sometimes almost bordering on a kind of cruisy but experimental not-quite-post-rock-not-quite-shoegaze-haze. It’s hard to pigeonhole or describe them and there’s a very Dunedin-esque air of languid melancholy permeating the songs which guitarist/ vocalist Semisi Ma’ia’i has the perfect relaxed natural voice to match and carry. Well worth spending a bit of time with this album as each occasion reveals more. It’s a bit like getting to know an introvert.

Marlin’s Dreaming play at The Others Way Festival in Auckland on 1 December 2023. That’s now.